I'm going home for Christmas

I'm pretty sure everyone has that one song (or movie) that feels like it belongs to them. I don't really know how to explain this but...you just feel like this song or this movie was written for you?

okay, never mind. you either get it or you don't. 

Christmas has always been a joyous occasion for me. I remember that one time when my dad brought home a tree and some decorations. My sister and I spent our time decorating the little apartment we stayed in for the first 14 years of our lives. It was a small living room, with second-hand furniture (my parents were poor at that time) and we had a small TV and some Mickey Mouse VCRS. We lived with little but we were taken cared of.

as the years went by and we moved to a bigger house, we kinda stopped decorating the house. being the design geek that i am, i continued decorating every year, sometimes alone, because my family grew disinterested over the years.
later on, my dad grew increasingly theological about everything and the whole 'christmas-is-a-pagan-festival' message creeped into our house (yes, it's true that christmas is a pagan festival and that the true meaning of Christmas is about Jesus's birth) and the atmosphere dimmed as the years went by.

in the last 2 Christmas-es, my house remained bare. decorating the house became a chore and as we grew older, we became busier.
also, i realized that my boyfriend wasn't really a Christmas buff too (i guess the biggest festival in his life would be Chinese New Year). we didn't really celebrate it together, seeing that we were in church 24/7 at that time.
by the time December rolled along this year, I knew that I had no magic left inside me. whatever childhood awe I had during 'the greatest time of the year' had already vanished.

anyway, back to this "song" that I was talking about.

I have a favorite Christmas song. It's called "Going Home For Christmas" by Steven Curtis Chapman.
It's a song about a grandma who loved the Christmas season and loved her family. Though she was ill and dying, she still planned the Christmas feast for the family. Halfway through the song, she dies.
Yeah, not exactly the 'ho ho ho it's a merry holly jolly Christmas' type of song.


In the song, she always reminded her family that while she was dying, she was joyfully waiting to 'go home' for Christmas. And that she will be "face to face with Jesus as we celebrate His birth" and that "this gift will be worth to her more than anything on earth."

*cue all my tears*

I guess this really hit home for me because it's been 2 years since I left Christianity and the church. I blogged about my experience last year and the pain has left me with ugly and bitter feelings towards God and the church. I was angry and occasionally blamed God for what happened, but I never understood why I was in this "woo hoo", crazy religion that seemed like a judgmental prison instead of the unconditional love showed by Jesus Christ. It's like, I've been a Christian all my useless life but I never knew this person of Jesus Christ and what this Gospel was. I felt cheated. In fact, I still do.


My wish this Christmas is that I will be like that grandma in the song.
This grandma (yeah i know she may be fictional) probably had a strong spiritual walk. This grandma probably loved her family with the same love that Jesus loved her. It takes a woman with a big heart to remind her family that though she was dying, she was still going home to a better place. And that going home to Jesus meant the world to her. I hope that this year, I will go home for Christmas and that I will go home to stay.


To all of you who made it this far on my post (sorry this took too long heh :P ), 
Merry Christmas and have a great year ahead!
I hope you will find that gift that will mean to you more than anything on earth.
XOXO